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There are many factors that influence when a child reaches certain developmental milestones. Use this timeline to know what to expect in the first year.

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When my daughter Annabelle was born, I had never changed a diaper. Even my childhood dolls were potty trained. I thought Pat the Bunny was about a bunny named Pat, and I’m embarrassed to admit how old Annabelle was before I finally figured out that the nipple comes out of the screw-on top so you can clean it.

Somehow, we made it through the first two weeks, all the way to the first visit to the pediatrician. The doctor patiently answered my long list of questions, pronounced Annabelle perfectly healthy and sent us home. “See you back in six weeks,” he said, closing the chart.

Six weeks?! An eternity. “Are you sure you want to wait that long?” I asked. He laughed. I cried. Couldn’t he see that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing?

I realized I needed help. So I did what many new mothers do: I started looking for a guru. You know, the quintessential baby expert. That one person who will tell you just what to do all the time. Follow the instructions and the dough will rise. The baby will grow. But whose recipe do you follow?

I chose the flavor of the month, a book called Secrets of the Baby Whisperer (Ballantine Books) by the late Tracy Hogg, a nurse and mother who looked very kind and understanding in her picture on the book cover. But when I got to the part where she advocated putting the baby on a schedule from Day 1, I knew she wasn’t for me. Annabelle was 4 weeks old and nowhere close to a schedule. So I did the only thing I could do: I put the book on a high shelf where I’d never see it again.

The Real Baby Guru: YOUT. Berry Brazelton, M.D., a longtime pediatrician and an author of many child-care books, says that today’s flood of advice from baby gurus—and the frustration it causes—is nothing new. Mothers have always had to struggle against feeling ignorant when it comes to raising their babies. “I think moms feel like the experts know so much that they must be very stupid not to know it,” Brazelton says.

But mothers are inherently smarter than they realize, he adds. “It seems like you’re making up your mind in a vacuum, but you’re not. The truth is that you’ve got your own reasons for doing things—and they’re not just instincts, but reasons.” In the end, Brazelton says, all that advice can be a help. But you just have to try your own thing.

Ultimately, that’s what I did. It’s taking a village to raise Annabelle, thanks to helpful advice from her pediatrician, friends and family—and, yes, even a little from the gurus.